


A Duty To Yourself

by branwyn



Series: Doing Our Best [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Coming Out, LGBQTAA issues, M/M, White Sand Ice Cream Shop Queer Youth Open House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1416223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since Cecil's best friend Earl came out in front of the whole town, Cecil has been very confused. He doesn't want to lose a best friend just to gain a boyfriend. And he hates second-guessing his fashion choices just because people can't keep their assumptions to themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Duty To Yourself

There is no reason for Cecil to be nervous just because he’s going out for ice cream with Earl Harlan. 

Cecil and Earl have been best friends since the second grade. Cecil has been eating ice cream for even longer than that. He’s been combining the two—hanging out with Earl, eating ice cream together at the White Sand Ice Cream Shop—ever since it opened when they were in eight grade. There’s nothing about this ice-cream eating trip that’s different from any other ice-cream eating trip they’ve ever been on. Nothing at all.

Well. Maybe one thing. But it still shouldn’t make any difference, right?

“Do you mind if we go on Tuesday night, actually?” Earl had said over the phone, the day after his big speech in front City Council, all the Scouts in Night Vale, and _Steve Carlsberg’s father._ “Scout Leader Guttierez and her partner Hannah do this informal kind of open house for queer kids in Night Vale on Tuesdays. The ice cream’s free your first time.”

“I’ve been to the White Sand many times, and paid for many ice creams there,” Cecil had reminded him, with a slight tone of _duh_ in his voice that would have inexcusably rude if he’d been talking to anyone other than Earl.

“No, stupid,” Earl laughed. “Your first time as a Tuesday-nighter. It’s a good excuse, you know? Anybody gives you a hard time about hanging out with “fags” (and here Earl supplied sarcastic air quotes that Cecil could practically hear over the phone) you just tell ‘em the ice cream was free. No one argues with free ice cream, Palmer.”

And because Earl was right (at least about the impossibility of arguing with free ice cream) Cecil now finds himself trudging alongside his best friend on his way to the White Sand. 

So far, they haven’t talked about Earl’s speech at all. But there’s a palpable difference hanging in the air between them now that hadn’t been evident when they were just talking on the phone. For one thing, Earl’s Scout-issue assault rifle is hanging over his shoulder, and it looks comfortable there, like Earl’s gotten into the habit of putting it on with the same regularity and thoughtlessness that goes into donning his shoes. The rifle is perfectly legal; it’s even considered good practice for Scouts of Earl’s rank to carry it with them as much as possible. But it still signals to Cecil that something subtle and different is in the air.

Cecil has been noticing some changes in himself as well over the last two days. There were the immediate, obvious changes, like when he got that strange, growly feeling in his chest after Tak Wallaby thumped Earl’s back encouragingly after his speech. (Cecil isn’t dwelling too hard on what that might mean, yet.) And then there’s the equally unsettling changes that don’t really have anything to do with Earl directly. 

For instance: even though the weather is perfect for it, and he’s been looking forward to the opportunity ever since he found them on sale last week, he’s elected not to wear his new pair of daisy duke shorts when he got dressed to meet Earl today. It wasn’t that he thought Earl wouldn’t like them. He’d just felt weird about strutting down the streets with his legs on display, all of a sudden. 

He’s never been shy about showing off his legs before. They were nothing compared to Earl’s legs, or Scoutmaster Ramirez’s, but they were slender and shapely in their own way, and short-shorts were cool in the late May heat. When he’d been trying on outfits earlier, though, it suddenly struck him that wearing tiny shorts out in public meant he was going to get _looked_ at. And even though he can’t quite put his finger on why, he knows that the way people are going to be looking at him now will be different than how they looked at him before Earl’s speech—that is to say, different in an icky way. If he were just going to school that would be one thing, but going to the White Sand means he’ll be walking down the street where anyone can see him. And he can’t seem to stop worrying that he’s going to give some disgusting and unhygienic person a boner, which he’ll then have to see, and know about, and be traumatized by _forever_. 

He’s way too young to get perved on by strange old people, right? Too young, too physically immature, too…unprepared.

Cecil isn’t, like, naive about sex or anything; inexperience isn’t the same thing as naiveté. But this isn’t about sex. This is about eyes following him when he doesn’t want eyes to follow him. Eyes belonging to people he doesn’t know. Adult eyes, creepy eyes, eyes that don’t even meet _his_ eyes before they go roaming over his body. This isn’t about being looked at. It’s about feeling like a target.

And maybe creepy, icky adult eyes have been sizing him up _every_ time he went out dressed that way before, and the only thing that’s different now is that Cecil is aware of the possibility. That would make sense, right? Just because he’s now known to be the best friend of an openly gay dude (who is way hotter than Cecil anyway, he doesn’t know why anyone would waste their time looking at him when they could be looking at Earl instead) it doesn’t mean that potential perverts have ever _cared_ what Cecil’s sexual orientation might be, or what Earl’s speech might imply about it. That’s what makes them perverts, after all—a complete lack of respect.

Earl might be feeling the same way. Maybe that’s why his rifle goes everywhere with him now. Before, the rifle only came out on social excursions when Cecil was wearing something particularly daring, and Cecil had always assumed that was just Earl’s way of warning people not to make fun of him. But maybe there’s something more at stake now. Maybe the rifle isn’t just for Cecil’s benefit anymore.

Cecil doesn’t really want to talk about this when Earl comes to pick him, so he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind instead.

“So did you fill out the standard change in sexual orientation paperwork at City Hall yet?” he asks, as they turn the corner leading away from Cecil’s neighborhood. “Or is that one of the forms you’re exempt from until you’re eighteen?”

Earl doesn’t even blink. This is the first overt reference Cecil’s made to the events of two days ago, but if he’s startled by Cecil bringing the subject up, he’s not giving anything away. 

“Actually, Lucy and Hannah keep those forms at the shop, for kids who want to get them turned in without their parents having to know,” he says. “It doesn’t make any difference to me, obviously—” Earl’s parents had both been crushed by a meteorite a year ago, and even if they’d been alive, they wouldn’t have cared— “but it’s important for some people to be able to file their paperwork without their families giving them a hard time.”

“Oh, right. That’s neat.” Cecil kicks a crushed up soda can lying in the middle of the sidewalk, then stops and waits on Earl, who naturally has to pick it up and put it in the nearest trash can. “Well, it’s not neat that people’s families’ give them a hard time. It’s neat that Scout Leader Guttierez and her partner do that, though. Um…so you’ve been here on Tuesday nights before, I guess?”

Earl shrugs. “I started coming about a month ago,” he says. “Lucy and Hannah are cool. And everyone minds their own business—if you run into someone you know, they’re not to going to spread it all over school or anything.”

“So it’s just kids from school who come?”

“Yeah. Well, not just Night Vale high. Some middle schoolers show up. Even a couple of college students. Anyone between fourteen and nineteen is welcome.”

“How did you find out about it?”

Earl shrugs. “Hannah invited me one day.”

“Why?” Cecil frowned.

“I dunno. I think she kind of guessed?”

Cecil frowned harder and scowled down at the sidewalk. It was bad enough that he hadn’t been the first person Earl told (Cecil’s been trying really hard not to feel resentful about that, but he can’t help it sometimes) and it was even worse that someone who hardly knew Earl had just figured it out, when Cecil hadn’t even had the slightest suspicion.

He does possess some tact, however, so instead of whining about it, he just makes a non-committal noise and shoves his hands into the pockets of his Jncos. He doesn’t wear them very often, but he’d opted for them today because they’re about as different from daisy dukes as it’s possible to get. Plus, he’s almost mastered the art of walking in them without tripping.

They walk in silence for another five minutes, and then Earl says, “Huh,” which makes Cecil look up. They’re at the door of the White Sand, and it looks pretty full—at least a dozen kids are inside, and only some of them are people Cecil knows.

“Pretty full tonight, for a Tuesday,” Earl adds, reaching for the door.

“Yeah?” Cecil finds himself hanging back a bit, catching the door as Earl goes inside. “Is that a good thing?”

Earl shrugs. “Could be,” he says. “If they’re here for the right reasons.”

Cecil, who doesn’t have the faintest idea what reason he’s here, except that Earl had asked him to come, says nothing and follows him in.

*

“A double scoop of dark chocolate with sriracha swirl in a sugar cone, please,” Cecil says to Hannah Gutierrez, who beams at him from behind the hooded glass display counter of ice cream flavors.

“It’s nice to see you here tonight, Cecil,” she says, taking a cone from the dispenser and digging into the dark chocolate sriracha barrel with an ice cream scoop. “That’ll be two dollars, please. First scoop and the cone are free, but I have to charge you for the double.”

“No problem,” says Cecil, digging his wallet out of his pocket without demur. Truth to be told, he wasn’t even sure he ought to be eligible for the free scoop, not when it was obvious that the ice cream was a perk for the…well, for the kids who were here for the same reason Earl was here. Which was different from the reason that Cecil was here. Cecil was here for Earl. Earl and the others were here for…solidarity, or something. Which is great for them, obviously. Cecil just doesn’t really know how or where he fits in, yet.

“I see Earl brought you!” continues Hannah, brightly. “That’s nice. You two are really close, huh?”

“Earl is my best friend,” says Cecil, not quite sure why he’s frowning, as he trades Hannah the money for the ice cream cone.

“Lucy was so proud of him the other night, she just about burst out of her Scout vest,” Hannah says, while Cecil begins to strategically lick his ice cream cone in the places it’s most likely to start melting first. “Earl Harlan is a real leader.”

Cecil nods. “The tablets down in City Hall say he’ll be Scoutmaster one day.” Not, Cecil thinks, that this is why Earl takes Scouting so seriously. He thinks it’s the same with him wanting to work in radio. The prophecies exist because Cecil is a natural at radio, and Earl is a natural at Scouting, not the other way around. How would prophecies make any sense, otherwise?

“Oh, of course.” Hannah nods, then hands Cecil a napkin, because he’s missed a spot and no-longer-iced cream is drizzling down the cone onto his fingers. “But it’s a real leader who speaks up when it’s not an easy thing to do. Earl took a risk, standing up in front of his friends and all those people the other night. There are little boys with scarlet envelopes in their future who are going to have an easier time in Scouts, thanks to him.”

Cecil doesn’t know quite what to say to that, so he asks for an empty cup instead. The sriracha swirl in his ice cream is making it melt faster than normal and he’s going to end up with chocolate smeared everywhere in a second if he’s not careful.

As he looks around the ice cream parlor for a booth or table with Earl’s familiar, close-cropped dark head poking above it, he suddenly wonders whether Hannah thinks that the reason Earl brought Cecil with him was because they were…you know, together. In a way that was different from a best-friends way. It would sort of be a natural assumption, right? Two guys who go everywhere together, one of whom shops in the girl’s clothing section of the department store occasionally, the other one bravely announcing his gayness to the whole town—maybe she thinks that Cecil’s being here is another sort of announcement. 

Suddenly, the spicy ribbon of hot sauce in his ice cream isn’t settling very well in Cecil’s stomach. Because he doesn’t care what Hannah thinks, but he cares very much what Earl thinks, and what if Earl…what if the _reason_ Earl outed himself in front of everyone, and then brought Cecil to a queer ice cream social _under armed escort_ was because he thought _Cecil_ was gay? And like, not even just gay, but too clueless to realize that being openly gay came with a lot of risks? What if the way Cecil dresses, and just…generally behaves, made Earl feel like he had to protect Cecil by making himself a public target instead?

What if Earl never told him he was gay because…because he’s not?

Cecil pushes through the crowd, still looking for Earl, and he’s just spotted him when another boy, a little older than him and completely unfamiliar to Cecil, appears in front of him suddenly. He’s blushing a little. Cecil blinks and stares through him blankly, trying not to be rude, but desperately impatient to find his friend.

“Um, hi,” the boy says. “I, um, haven’t seen you here before. Is this your first time, or…?”

“Sorry,” Cecil barks. “I mean, yes, I’m new, hi, I’m Cecil. I just had a profound revelation and now I need to go talk to my friend. Nice to meet you. Have some ice cream.” He shoves his ice cream cone, which he’d turned upside down inside the paper cup to control the melting problem, into the boy’s hand, and darts around him.

He finds Earl sitting at a booth in the corner with two girls, both with matching shaved heads dyed in complementary shades of blue and pink. They also have matching nose rings. As soon as they see Cecil bearing down on them, the one on the left rolls her eyes and mutters something to Earl before climbing out of the booth. The second girl follows her automatically, like she’s being drawn on a leash. 

Cecil doesn’t even bother wondering what they’re thinking, or why they’e acting in such perfect tandem. He slides into the now-empty booth seat across from Earl and watches him take a bite of his pistachio sundae topped with chocolate coated scorpions.

“Do you think I’m gay?” Cecil blurts without preamble.

Earl raises his eyebrows slightly, but he finishes chewing and swallowing before he speaks. “Are you asking me to evaluate your relative appearance of gayness from an objective standpoint, or are you asking whether I have formed a definite conclusion as to your sexual orientation without bothering to confirm it with you first?”

“Yes,” says Cecil, desperately.

The eye roll that greets this statement is epic, and profoundly familiar. Hardly a day passes in which Earl isn’t rolling his eyes like that at something Cecil says. “Want a bite?” he says, offering Cecil his sundae.

“No, I do not want a bite of your disgusting ice cream. You know I hate pistachio.” That said, Cecil reaches across the table and picks one of the chocolate-coated scorpions off the top of the sundae and pops it in his mouth. “I want you to answer my question,” he reiterates around the crunching.

“I think a lot of people assume that you’re gay.” Earl looks calm and untroubled, poking his spoon into his sundae. “People do that, you know. They make assumptions. Especially when you go out in public wearing backless yellow sundresses with matching sandals.”

“What does good fashion have to do this?” Cecil demands.

“In an ideal world, nothing.” Earl glances around the shop, like he’s trying to see if they’re being listened to. “But the world we live in comes with people who like to make assumptions instead of asking straight questions. Pardon the pun.”

Well, Cecil’s not going to get a better opening if he waits all night for it. “Are _you_ gay? Really? Or were you just…I dunno, making some kind of heroic statement?”

Earl arches an eyebrow. “You think I’d out myself in front of the whole town under false pretenses, just so that…what, people would stuff dead jackelopes in my locker at school?”

“Ew!” Cecil recoils. “Did that happen?”

“It’s going to happen,” says Earl, continuing to eat his ice cream in a calm and reasonable way. “If anyone can get past the booby traps. But to kill your suspense: no. I wasn’t lying. I’m really gay. Very gay. Maybe a 1.5 on the City Council’s Official Scale of Gayness in Adolescent Males.” At Cecil’s blank look, he explains, “The lower the number, the less likely you are to be attracted to people of a different gender.”

“Oh.” Suddenly needing something to do with his hands, Cecil plucks a napkin out of the dispenser and makes a failed attempt to fold it into an origami cup. “So…if you’re a 1.5, what do you think I am?”

“Cecil.” Earl’s tone changes, suddenly, from calm and reasonable, to sympathetic and slightly protective. “Why are you asking _me_? These aren’t the kind of questions other people can answer for you.”

“Because I don’t know!” Cecil manages, just at the last second, to keep the volume of his voice down, but he can’t keep himself from throwing his hands into the air. The exasperation has to come out somehow. “I mean, I never even used to think about it. Some people were cute, other people weren’t. I bought clothes because I thought they looked good on me, and I liked it when people said I looked pretty. I stare at your legs, like, a _a lot_. But I didn’t know there was a chart with numbers. And, and, aren’t you supposed to figure this stuff by having feelings for someone? The only person I care about in a…different way is _you_. But you’re my best friend, and if you’re gay, and one day you take off your clothes and I find out that it isn’t just your legs I like to stare at, then we’ll be boyfriends, and it’ll be like all those years of being best friends was just practice for something more important, and I _hate_ that idea! Being best friends isn’t supposed to be like, the kiddie version of being boyfriends! Is it?” Cecil stared at Earl hopelessly, searching his unfairly handsome face for answers. “If it turns out that we like each other in a gay way, what happens to us being best friends? And why am I so afraid of people looking at me all of a sudden? Why does sex have to ruin nice things, like friendships, and a superior fashion sense?”

Before Cecil’s eyes, Earl’s face seems to melt like a bowl of dark chocolate ice cream that’s been stirred into a gloppy, sweet soup. And then, something happens that’s never happened before: Earl reaches across the table and takes Cecil’s hand.

“It’s okay, Cecil,” he says, his voice low and soothing. “I am always going to be your friend, for however long you want me. Nothing’s going to change that. Okay?”

Something tight and clenched in Cecil’s chest seems to loosen a bit. He squeezes Earl’s hand back and doesn’t let go. “Promise?”

“I promise,” says Earl firmly. “And you don’t need to be afraid of people looking at you. People have always looked at you. You’re cute, Cecil. But…if they say anything to you that you don’t like, or if they try to touch you when you don’t want to be touched…well. We’ll work on getting you those last two badges. Then you’ll be a Weird Scout and you can carry your rifle when you need to. In the mean time, you leave them to me.”

“Is that why you’ve always got your rifle with you now?” said Cecil, in a small voice.

“I’m practicing for the last sniper badge I need before I make Dreadnought Scout,” says Earl primly, patting the rifle on the seat beside him. “If it comes in handy for other reasons…that’s just a bonus.”

Cecil manages to crack a smile. He still hasn’t let go of Earl’s hand, and Earl seems perfectly content with that. Cecil notices Hannah Guttierez looking over at them from behind the counter and beaming broadly, but it doesn’t bother him like it did a few minutes ago. 

Maybe…maybe there’s another alternative for him and Earl that he hadn’t considered, back when Cecil was panicking about expectations, and assumptions, and Earl’s motivations. Maybe there’s a way for Earl to be gay, and be Cecil’s best friend, and for Cecil to be highly attracted to Earl’s legs (and potentially other parts of him), while also wondering a little more seriously whether the blushing boy who’d stopped him earlier hadn’t, actually, been kind of hot. Maybe best friends, one of whom thinks the other is cute, one of whom thinks the other has legs to die for, can still be best friends, but the kind of best friends who can hold hands when they want to, and even, possibly, touch other parts of their bodies together (when they want to) and it doesn’t mean that their best-friend love is in any way second best to another kind of love.

Maybe, when Cecil has worked it all out in his head a little more clearly, he’ll run all these ideas past Earl. Maybe…Maybe he’ll even ask if Earl would like him to come over one day and show off a few more outfits for him, and maybe ask if Earl would like to show off a little less of his uniform for Cecil than is strictly regulation.

In the mean time, however, they’re still holding hands. And that feels…really nice. And here and now, in the White Sand Ice Cream Shop, no one is looking at them, except for Hannah, and she’s not doing anything but smiling.

“I got a pair of daisy dukes on sale the other day,” says Cecil, stealing the last chocolate-coated scorpion from Earl’s melting sundae. “Maybe we could go hiking on Saturday and I could show you?”

Earl just rolls his eyes. “Only if you wear your regulation hiking boots,” he says firmly. “And bring plenty of sunblock.”

Cecil beams. Earl blushes, very slightly, and smiles back.


End file.
